Pages

Wednesday, June 11, 2008

Happy Birthday Dumbass

Raul and the Kings of Spain

Today is the birthday of my good friend Raúl. It is incomprehensible why we are friends, but in more ways than one we are. I was born in the Paleozoic Era with the paramecium; he of course went on to be a Tyrannosaurus Rex of the mid Mesozoic. He has hair; I don’t. I drink (a lot). He’d just rather eat. He sweats in nightclubs. I think that’s tacky. He can’t live without his Blackberry; I thought Blackberry was a city. He’s on the portly side, although he’s trying to slim down. I’m not going anywhere. That’s why I make him stand on my right, which is the only way we always make a human “10”.

He talks to me about soccer; I talk to him about everything else. We both understand the value of a great dumb blonde joke (Miss South Carolina is our Goddess) and although we agree that Top Gun and The Goonies are the best movies to watch on the screen, we secretly concede that Mean Girls was the best movie ever made (“I wish I could bake a cake filled with rainbows and smiles and everyone would eat and be happy”…. “Do you even go here????)

We detest fun loving Libras, worship Sinatra and abhor jobs that make us believe in teamwork (we actually invented teamwork) and try as he might, he can never get the perfect Galipan plan to materialize. We once secretly trained an applicant on a drunken night for her interview at Harvard, and we woke up the next morning wondering if she had even passed the English test at all. Today she’s his girlfriend and my daughter. And God knows I tried to make it the other way around but that just took our manly relationship from the Facebook Wall to Facebook Inbox until the issue “que no nos ibamos a caer a coñazos” was resolved.

In the end, what I like about him is that he makes me laugh, and as much as we try to swim, paddle or rowboat out of the damn Island, they keep bashing us to go lie in the hammocks. He himself removed my life jacket when he told me once: “understand that by officially leaving you are never giving that up, you are taking this with you.” Now I’m stuck with him for Eternity.

So on your birthday Rolls: "Here’s to you, here’s to me. Best of Friends we’ll always be. But if by chance we disagree, then fuck you all, let’s drink to me.”